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Egzamin maturalny z języka angielskiego dla absolwentów klas dwujęzycznych __ Część II_'

TASK 6. (12 points)

Read the following text. For questions 6.1.-6.7. choose the appropriate paragraph

and write the corresponding Ietter (A-F) in the ANSWER column. Some paragraphs

may match morę than one question. Then answer questions 6.8.-6.12 in the space

provided. Do not quote from the text.

For each correct answer you will be given 1 point.

END THE EXILE

A.    In August, the world congress of art historians begins in Athens. Many people from all over the world will come to the city crowned by the Parthenon. But the Greeks, hoping against hope, have invited a very special group of guests who will not be coming. The sacred figures of the Elgin Marbles, sawn off the tempie by a Scottish nobleman almost 200 years ago, will be staying in the British Museum.

B.    Where are they going, those grave maidens carrying wreaths, those bareback horsemen brooding as they ride? I'm one of those who hope that they are going back to Greece. Notjust because Lord Elgin took them wrongfully, and not just because the Greeks need them morę than we do. But because ifs time they left England. They have been here too long for England's good.

C.    The Marbles in the British Museum are performers, trained as actors in a ceremony. But this is not the Panathenaic Procession. It is a Great British ceremony, about an imperial splendour which thought of itself as universal rather than merely national. The figures exhibited in the Duveen Gallery no longer deliver Athens any morę than the bagpipers who tramp round banquets at Windsor Castle deliver Scotland. They are guests from Greece who became so well known during the 19th century that they were adopted into the family.

D.    The controversy has been running for two centuries. The arguments for keeping the Marbles in London change all the time, but the arguments for returning them stay much the same. In 1828, a Polish visitor to London wrote in her diary: 'There [in Athens] everything had its reason for existence and meaning and formed one whole; here everything is in pieces, almost in ruins, without any sense or order. In a word, these remains brought to England are no longer what they were in Greece where the common people, even through looking at them, developed their taste and perception.' That remains the core of the returners' case. The Marbles only make sense when they are together inthe context of the great building of which they were an integral part, and they are the central symbol of the Greek nation's identity.

E.    Repatriation is in vouge and the current of opinion is moving against the British Museum. But what about the fear of many big museums that returning the marbles would unleash aflood of demands for other treasures to be repatriated - Berlin’s Pergamon Altar back to Turkey or Napoleon’s loot in the Louvre back to Venice or Egypt? Richard Allan MP, like the Greeks, insists that the Parthenon is a special case which sets no precedent. The Marbles, he says, are not isolated objects, but part of the monument that still exists. And that makes the difference.

F.    The Greeks are planning to open the so-called 'virtual Parthenon'. When this museum on the Acropolis is complete, a new situation will exist in which Greece and Britain could invent a solution which humiliates neither side. The Greeks no longer insist on property rights and suggest the marbles could be loaned to a part of the Acropolis Museum under British Museum authority. After all, England has had its tum and sucked its own bizarre identity-juice from these Stones. That was long ago, and they do not matter to this culture as they once did. Greece has been very patient, but should now welcome its exiles home.

abridgeded from Neal Ascherson, 'End the exile\ The Obsereer, 20June2004